But the spiritual region was matter of conscience, and not of external
regulation.
A further reservation which Milton would make related to endowments,
or the maintenance of ministers. The Protectorate, and the
constitution of 1657, maintained an established clergy in the
enjoyment of tithes or other settled stipends. Nothing was more
abhorrent to Milton's sentiment than state payment in religious
things. The minister who receives such pay becomes a state pensioner,
"a hireling." The law of tithes is a Jewish law, repealed by the
Gospel, under which the minister is only maintained by the freewill
offerings of the congregation to which he ministers. This antipathy to
hired preachers was one of Milton's earliest convictions. It thrusts
itself, rather importunately, into _Lycidas_ (1636), and reappears
in the Sonnet to Cromwell (_Sonnet_ xvii., 1652), before it is
dogmatically expounded in the pamphlet, _Considerations touching means
to remove Hirelings out of the Church_ (1659). Of the two corruptions
of the church by the secular power, one by force, the other by pay,
Milton regards the last as the most dangerous.
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